“Not boring!” - Maria at work; “You lie about me on your blog.” - Mrs. Perils;
Archive for June 2006
I’m off to Detroit on a redeye tonight to visit with my mom and brother this weekend, then I head for Milwaukee Sunday night for a week of cheese and sleaze. Maybe at the same time. Perhaps I’ll provide a photo tour of my home town. Maybe I’ll just sleep the whole weekend.
Anyone else have grand plans?
A little overcast and cool here, but summer is hurtling towards us nonetheless, at least according to the calendar. As I returned from the gym tonight (the scale is again my friend - 153 3/4!), an ice cream truck was cruising the neighborhood. As parents, we may have been criminally abusive - whenever one of these trucks came up the block playing their corny little melodies, we’d tell our 3- or 4-year-old son that it was a “music truck”. No mention of its overpriced, underflavored payload. I mean, can you picture the first time he’s with a friend or two, and they exclaim, “There’s the ice cream truck!”
The truck tonight was playing “Daisy”, the song that HAL crooned to Dave in Kubrick’s “2001- A Space Odyssey”. That song has a special place in Philobelia, as it was one of my early attempts to cover songs with substitute lyrics of dubious poetic value. Here it is, kinda apropos of the anniversary post below:
Daisy, daisy, give me your answer true
I’m half crazy, all for the love of you.
It won’t be a stylish wedding
I can’t afford the bedding
But I’ll be damned
If I’ll be crammed
In a sleeping bag built for two!
OK, as Rocky used to say after Bullwinkle recited some execrable piece of doggerel, Here’s something you’ll really like. It’s a little premature, but let’s declare it summer. Here’s a video snippet featuring local hip-hop duo Blue Scholars and some unartistic cut-and-paste from MC Perils.
Last night we once again attended the weekly gathering of liberal wishful-thinkers known as Drinking Liberally. It’s a confluence of local journalists, bloggers, politicos and, sometimes, candidates or officeholders in a sort of raucous pub setting. We’ve become somewhat acquainted with some interesting local bloggers and several journalists that I’ve been reading for years. It makes for some lively discussion.
In observation of my diet, I had hit the gym before we went (weighed in at 154 1/2!), and nursed one glass of wine through the whole evening. Drinking Stingily, more like.
As we were walking back to our car, I espied this car, and it’s bumper sticker, and simply could not pass up the photo op:
I mean, it has to be tongue-in-cheek, right? Maybe it belonged to someone at the tony restaurant in the same block as our ratty little pub. But probably not.
This article from yesterday’s paper:
Congressman weds girlfriend on bike trail
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DAMASCUS, Va. — U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher and his longtime girlfriend tied the knot on a bicycle trail, and for the wedding, shared a burrito and a piece of coconut cake.
had a familiar ring to it, and one of the few brain cells still working in my favor prodded me to check my calendar. Sure enough, it turns out that, 32 years ago today, Mrs. Perils and I were married under similar (though surely less opulent) circumstances:
You can read details of the nuptuals here.
This would be an opportune time for me to take a firm stand against same-sex marriage. It should improve over time, as ours has. Thank you, dear, for putting up with me for another year!
Another lovely night for a walk down to Gasworks Park, fueled (not) by my reduced-portion, no-wine dinner. I know, we’re boring. We’re going to have to drop in and see this movie before it leaves:
A store on 45th had a lamp that Mrs. Perils forbade me to even look at, much less consider purchasing:
Once at Gasworks, we encountered a troupe of clog dancers whom we think were rehearsing for the Fremont Solstice Parade. Amusing video click here .
I have more to say, but I’ve become too weak to type.
In an interesting twist, tomorrow is National Hunger Awareness Day, and for the first time in its 5-year history, I’m going to be aware of it. Might be a nice touch if I contribute the food I’m not eating. Except that bag of chips. It’s under the desk for emergencies. Hurricane season’s upon us, after all.
Anyone want to join me in a weight-loss challenge of some kind? I’ve been carrying around between 5 and 15 extra pounds for the last 3 - 4 years, and I’m kind of fed up with it, fed up with picking around clothes in my dresser and closet that either won’t fit or make me feel like Chris Farley. I have shirts that are disintegrating because I’ve been avoiding shopping for new clothes. Also, it’s just unhealthy. It’s harder on my joints when I run, I’m sure it adds something to my blood pressure.
When I returned from my last out-of-town business trip, I was nudging right up against 160, which is like a 20-year high. I’ll take my shirt off again in broad daylight at 145. I know that sounds pretty light to some, but I’m very small-boned, and this stuff just hangs on my waist. Today at the gym, I weighed in at 156+. I’m not going to use anything fancier than Mrs. Perils’ “Quit Chewing And Swallowing” diet- just cut back on between-meal stuff and portions, alcohol, the usual suspects. No more bags of chips squirreled away under my desk.
I have another week at home before I go on the road again (where a lot of unhealthy transgressions occur), so I have a chance to get a good running start.
I know I’ve whined about this a couple of times before, and gotten nowhere. Anyone else game? Suggest a comparative goal (total pounds, % of body weight, etc) and something fun for the winner (besides more and better sex and lustful stares at the beach).
I haven’t eaten since dinner. I wonder how much weight I’ve lost since then. I’m dyin’ here!
Since I fly (as a passenger) a lot, I check in now and then on Patrick Smith’s Salon column Ask The Pilot. At the end of the most recent one, the following excerpt from a reader comment really nailed my funny bone. He’s talking about the persistent internet activity regarding conspiracy theories about TWA Flight 800, which exploded over the Atlantic from fuel tank vapors:
The Internet is wonderful, but it is a two-edged sword. Years ago, I pointed out that it used to be that every village had its idiot, but all he could do was sit in the village square and mutter to himself. With the Internet, all the village idiots now can converse, compare notes and build on each other’s mutterings, making them … global village idiots.
John Mazor, a 27-year communications veteran in the airline industry
I should probably take the above as a caution against my own mutterings. I’m reminded of the scene in Woody Allen’s movie Love and Death, in which some town is playing host to a Village Idiot’s Convention. A huge banner hangs over main street proclaiming, “Welcome, Idiots!”
By my recollection, the last time we visited San Juan Island was in something like 1986. We stayed with some friends who have since moved off the island, and it was remarkable for the fact that our son that weekend learned to ride a bike without training wheels. He told us he was ready to try, so I took the training wheels off and helped him through many crash-and-burn iterations. Moments after the second picture below was snapped, however, he caught the knack and became an official big kid.
(Click any picture to enlarge.)
Unless you fly or have your own yacht, a trip to the San Juan Islands begins and ends with a ride on a Washington State Ferry. Since I hadn’t made the trip for so many years, I had serious sticker shock at the fare - $62.50 roundtrip!
This was our second outing with an REI tent we bought a couple years ago, and we still have to refer to the instructions to figure out where everything goes. Fortunately, it wasn’t raining, or dark, when we arrived at the park.
It did start raining that night, however, and continued into Friday.
By Friday afternoon it stopped raining and, although the weather was some shade of gray all weekend, it only rained at night. The picture below, looking from our campsite across Haro Strait to Vancouver Island, shows the schizophrenic nature of the weather, like one of those Yin-Yang icons - sunny and inviting on the left, shrouded in rain on the right.
We were fortunate to have some experienced camp cooks on the trip, and we ate well!
All of us on the trip brought kayaks, and we did a lot of paddling. On Friday, shortly after we launched, a pod of Orca whales paraded through the strait, trailing their paparazzi entourage of whale-watching boats. A mother and young whale, however, appeared next to shore about 200 yards from our boats, apparently feeding. I couldn’t get a picture, darn it! I did get some other shots on the water, however:
There were a couple of minus tides, allowing inspection of some tidepools.
That’s not me below - I never opened my laptop the whole weekend.
In all, there were 8 adults, 2 6-year-olds and 1 3-year-old in our group. The kids were a blast, played well together and behaved very well. One left me slack-jawed the first night by harrassing his parents to put him into bed.
One evening, after dinner was over, the adults were sitting by the fire and the kids were romping, one became upset because he hadn’t won one of the footrace games the kids were playing. His dad told him to go ahead and run to the finish line again, and then asked us adults to cheer for him when he got there. I asked the dad, “Are you sure you want to go there? It’s a slippery slope. Soon you’ll find yourself fixing teeball games.” Never taking his eyes off his boy, he said matter-of-factly, “I’m the coach.” We were both joking. But he is the coach.
Things were just starting to fray a little as we packed up on Sunday and headed for the ferry home - I heard one parent hiss, “Get going - you can cry and walk at the same time!”
Great weekend, all in all.
